My backlog, aka basically everything that isn’t overtly harem, has been weighing on my mind for about two years now. At some point, it occurred to me that perhaps I should remove the bulk of my older work from Amazon, and post it elsewhere. In fact, I actually began this process at one point way back in 2018, but ultimately I was forced to give up on that.
But circumstances have changed. Normally that’s a bad statement, but this time I mean that circumstances have changed for the better. The reason before I ultimately couldn’t do it was because I so desperately needed the money. But now that I’ve enjoyed success with A Warm Place and Raw, and (God willing) with my future harem endeavors, I’m not forced to keep the titles up.
So I imagine the big question is: why do you want to remove a lot of your titles from Amazon?
There’s a list of reasons, and it has been growing. And I’ve finally been pushed over the edge on the matter.
If you’re interested in finding out why this is happening, and also a comprehensive list of titles that will be brought down, SLOWLY, I would like to reiterate, (don’t worry, you have time to grab them if you still want, and they’ll still be available, just not on Amazon), then read on.
So let’s just start out with the biggest reason, the one that is motivating me the most to do this. If this was not a factor, I probably wouldn’t be doing this. Amazon cannot be trusted. What I mean by this is: Amazon is far too massive of a company and, consequently, they have automated the shit out of basically everything. And clearly they are doing it more and more as time goes on. Bots, algorithms, WTFever, are running rampant and glitching a lot. Within the past week, they informed me that FOUR of my titles had been found to have copyrighted material in them and that I needed to provide proof that I had permission to publish them. Not even that I owned them myself, THAT I HAD PERMISSION. AS IN, ACCORDING TO AMAZON’S SYSTEM, IT ALREADY CONCLUDED THAT I WAS POSTING MATERIAL THAT DID NOT BELONG TO ME, EVEN THOUGH I LITERALLY WROTE IT MYSELF AND IT HAS NEVER BEEN PUBLISHED ANYWHERE ELSE. Consider all that for a moment. And that is just ONE of the potential issues that an account can be flagged for, and potentially suspended or even terminated for. Now I will give props here and say that with a few exceptions, normally when I respond and an actual human looks at it, they realize it’s an error and fix it immediately. (Though that was not the case here, had to fight a bit this time around.) But Amazon’s huge, what happens if I run into someone who’s in a bad mood? What happens if I run into someone who hates smut? What happens if Amazon automates their system so much that we reach a point that I can’t even reach a real person anymore? It’s heading in that direction. You can see the problem here. Which leads into my next issue.
Amazon hates erotica. Despite the fact that it has to be just raking in the cash, Amazon hates erotica, smut, anything with actual sex scenes in it. Which is…like everything I’ve written. Although they’d never admit it publicly, they clearly are irritated by erotica because it causes the most problems and eats into their profits when stupid assholes bitch about it loud enough and cause a controversy. God fucking forbid people enjoy their smut. Amazon has, in their zeal to pretend they’re actually listening to their consumers, gone on a rampage like six times now and wrecked or in some capacity fucked up who knows how many people’s income by mass-deleting books that suddenly don’t comply with their arbitrary new rules and, in some cases, outright terminating author’s accounts. And therein lies my specific problem: I’ve written some stuff that might be seen as questionable. Even though I went out of my way literally every time in every single one of my stories to ensure that consent was asked for and gotten, I’m sure some of the heavier scenes I’ve written (women into being tied down, slapped or choked, dub-con or non-con fantasies), might at some point be considered problematic. Just because something was okay when it was first published doesn’t mean it will remain okay forever. And the biggest problem of all this is Amazon REFUSES to release a list of things that are not okay to write about or depict. We authors have had to fucking guess. Quick example: Apparently, you are not allowed to depict a woman with her hands bound on the cover. A man with his hands bound is fine, but that’s a whole other thing. But as far as I can tell, NOWHERE does it say this. Even though it is a VERY SPECIFIC thing, it’s not a rule that’s been written down anywhere. Shit, how many people have had a title blocked and have no idea why? Because Amazon won’t TELL US. The message is, 99% of the time, some fucking variant of ‘you have violated the content guidelines, now fix it even though we won’t tell you what’s wrong’. It could be fucking ANYTHING. It could literally be nothing, just a glitch. But there’s no difference in the messages, so there’s basically no way to tell. And it’s an old problem, I used to run into this even way back in the mid-2010s. And as we all know, most of my backlog is labeled as erotica. And once you label something as erotica, you can’t unlabel it. Not unless you completely republish it as a new title…which is its own bag of worms, and which I wouldn’t do anyway, because it is erotica, which is why I don’t write straight-up erotica anymore. And so all of this boils down to: about three quarters of my currently live titles are potential landmines that might suddenly become a problem with each day that passes.
I AM NO LONGER AN EROTICA AUTHOR. This is something I’ve spoken of a bit already, but basically, just about everything that came before A Warm Place is no longer representative of the work I am now trying to sell. And, in fact, it might actually turn away new prospective readers, or disappoint new readers. It could be harem readers stumbling across my old erotica and deciding I’m not a harem author, or it could be an erotica reader who’s really just looking for straight erotica and becomes disappointed as I drift further and further away from that. I’ve even been drifting away from more sex-heavy works as I’ve learned that there is, shockingly, less overlap between erotica and harem than I realized. And although it might sound surprising, I’m actually happy about this. Believe it or not, I am thrilled to take my foot more off of the erotica pedal after this many years of doing it. I can now write a book that can have as few as three ‘on screen’ sex scenes in it and most of my audience will be okay with that. That blows my mind.
IT MAKES SENSE TO LAY THE GROUNDWORK ON OTHER PLATFORMS. A side effect of not being able to trust Amazon is that, as I’ve mentioned in the past, it makes sense to have a backup plan. Having a presence on the 15% of the ebook market that Amazon hasn’t destroyed would be smart. So as I take them down from Amazon, I’ll be posting them elsewhere.
Those are the main reasons. Also, at this point, they aren’t really earning much of anything. I think they’re all pretty much ‘read out’, and for the most part the people who are going to read it have done so by now. Now, that being said, I’d like to reiterated that I’ll be making them available on Smashwords and, through that site, whatever other platforms are available like Kobo and Barnes & Noble, etc. I’ll also probably take the time to make them available as Kindle files through my Patreon or, shit, maybe I’ll just throw them up here on the site for free, too. I’d like to reconfirm though that this is for my backlog. All my new stuff will be published on Amazon and in the Kindle Unlimited.
Below is a list of titles that will be removed over the next several months.
EXPLORATION
MY UNDEAD LOVER
THE MISTY VIXEN STARTER PACK
DEMONESS SERIES (Note: This is getting removed because of the reboot. If people really want access to the original version, I’ll post it up for free through my site.)
HELLCATS TRILOGY
WANDERLUST SERIES
ROYAL LUST
AMAZONIAN’S LOVE
ADVENTUROUS
PARANORMAL PASSIONS TRILOGY
DESIRE SERIES
ALIEN HAREM SERIES
LUST & ADVENTURE TRILOGY
SEX & SURVIVAL TRILOGY
VALKYRIES TRILOGY
PARASEXUAL SERIES
PINK TRILOGY
BLIND DATE TRILOGY
SNAKESKIN TRILOGY
THE PALE REDHEAD TRILOGY
LARGE & LOVELY TRILOGY
Here is the final thing I want to say on this: I know it’s possible that there are some people reading this who, for any number of reasons, are missing titles from my library that they may want, and have been waiting for the right time. Well, that time will be coming soon. This month (April) I will be making EVERY SINGLE TITLE THAT I AM GOING TO BE TAKING DOWN FREE FOR SEVERAL DAYS. I will make a separate post about that, with a comprehensive list of links, so be ready for that. It will happen soon.
EDIT: Physical copies will be left intact and available through Amazon, since Amazon doesn’t seem to give a shit about them. And all future Misty Vixen titles will be available as physical paperbacks, too.